D&D 5E Strength or Dex for a Goblin Tempest Cleric/Genie Warlock

[ECMO3]

I am starting a new campaign and my Character is a Goblin from the Feywild who worships the Queen of Air and Darkness and has a pact with a Djinn. As far as backstory her Deity is at war with Yan-C-Bin over the Air Domain and is aligned with a number of Djinn including her patron. She will start as a Warlock level 1 and take the rest of her levels in Tempest Cleric. She might eventually dip in Storm Sorcerer too, but that won't be until at least level 11 if at all.

She has Far traveler Background (coming from Feywild) and proficiency in Deception, Investigation, Insight and Peception

Her Warlock Spells will be Hex, Armor of Agathys, booming blade and shocking grasp. She will be hit and run in melee a lot, sword and board using booming blade, but also using nimble escape to disengage and maybe cash in on extra booming blade damage. Damage will be ok but not great with 1d8+Booming Blade+Genies Wrath. With nimble escape she should be able to add extra booming blade damage frequently and Hex would add damage too (albeit difficult to set up with sword and board). Once Divine Strikes comes online damage will be even better, but by that time she will be mostly casting leveled spells in combat I think.

My 5th level feat will be Skill Expert getting expertise in Stealth and boosting Wisdom to 18. Not sure about 9th level yet, thinking of reskinning Gift of Chromatic Dragon thematically to be an Elemental feat instead of a Dragon feat (keeping same mechanics) or taking Warcaster or taking a Wisdom ASI.

Her level 1 stats are C12, I8, W17, Ch13 and I have one 8 and one 16 left to give. 16 Strength lets me use heavy armor and gives me more weapon choices but makes nimble escape-hide pretty useless until 5th level and gimped even after that. Strength would also let me use a quarter staff which would make the setup for Hex on the first round of combat easier. A 16 Dex would mean hide would be useful early and would be awesome after getting expertise even with disadvantage in Scale or Half-Plate. With Dex, I also might be able to find some gauntlets of Ogre Power and get the best of both worlds.
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Thoughts, advice?

 

[Smythe the Bard]

DEX=super stat. go with DEX, then take a monk dip so DEX can be used for attack and increased moment.

 

[aco175]

DEX=super stat. go with DEX, then take a monk dip so DEX can be used for attack and increased moment.

nuff said.

 

[Clint_L]

If your plan is to go with expertise in stealth when you get your first feat, then getting heavy armour doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so I would recommend taking the 16 in dex (though with an 8 in strength you are not going to be great in melee). Can you take a point out of Char and Wis to bring Str to 10 at least? This character concept is fun but super MAD; I love that you are putting character ahead of optimization.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, as much as I value off-beat choices, Dexterity is just so much better than Strength in this context. More (and better) skills, better defenses, equal offense (rapier+shield), Initiative...it's basically impossible to go wrong with Dex.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

In your goblin case, dex is the better choice.
Otherwise, strength is better for the cleric.

 

[ECMO3]

DEX=super stat. go with DEX, then take a monk dip so DEX can be used for attack and increased moment.

Hmmm.... Did not think of Monk. 2 levels of Monk for dedicated weapon would do it I guess. If I took 4 levels, Elemental Monk would be extremely thematic I think but not the equivalent of 4 more levels of Cleric.

 

[ECMO3]

If your plan is to go with expertise in stealth when you get your first feat, then getting heavy armour doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so I would recommend taking the 16 in dex (though with an 8 in strength you are not going to be great in melee). Can you take a point out of Char and Wis to bring Str to 10 at least? This character concept is fun but super MAD; I love that you are putting character ahead of optimization.

With expertise she will overcome the disadvantage most of the time with a good dexterity. +9 to stealth (16Dex) is going to average 16 when rolling with disadvantage, which is good enough to be successful a majority of the time. +5 (8 Dex) will average 12, which is good enough to be successful occasionally.

A 16 dex is fine in melee with finesse weapons ..... but then the magic weapons you find might not be finesse. I can't multiclass with a lower Charisma and a lower Wisdom means I can't really take a half feat.

I am thinking of taking Fey Touched and Dissonant Whispers instead of Expertise, but then I really need to invest in dex to use bonus action hide at all.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

With expertise she will overcome the disadvantage most of the time with a good dexterity. +9 to stealth (16Dex) is going to average 16 when rolling with disadvantage, which is good enough to be successful a majority of the time. +5 (8 Dex) will average 12, which is good enough to be successful occasionally.

A 16 dex is fine in melee with finesse weapons ..... but then the magic weapons you find might not be finesse. I can't multiclass with a lower Charisma and a lower Wisdom means I can't really take a half feat.

I am thinking of taking Fey Touched and Dissonant Whispers instead of Expertise, but then I really need to invest in dex to use bonus action hide at all.

A problem of dex is always, that it is an "all in" stat. If you take it, you better increase it to 20 to really get all the advantages (high to hit, high skills, high AC while being able to be sneaky).

Staying at dex 16 means, your AC will stay as low as 15, or 16 with medium armor that has no disadvantage on stealth. With 8 strength, you might reach your max load fast if you go half plate for AC 17.

The advantage of str is, that you can stay at 16 and wear all the best armors for AC18 without worries. Also, with just one skill investment, you get all the strength skills, which are often asked for during adventuring. Bare strength checks are also not unheard of.

So, I would still opt for dex in the goblin case. I might however drop dex to 14 in favour of increasing different stats and wear medium armor. I think you don't need the to hit bonus if you can sometimes attack from hiding.
If you are looking at feats, you should get your wisdom as high as possible from the get go. So dropping dex to 14 might allow you to start with 17 wis and a decent con on top. Feytouched will increase it to 18 immediately.

Edit: I see you already boosted wis to 17 by pilaging int.

 

[Ancalagon]

I share the other's concerns of this being very MAD. Notably, with a Cha of 13, your shocking grasp will be very difficult to land. I'm not quite sure what a level of warlock is going to give you...

Anyway, to address your initial question, I do agree with the others that dex is the way to go